Sentenced to Death, Rape Victim is Freed by Pakistani Court

By SETH MYDANS

Published: June 8, 2002

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 7 — Bowing to public outrage, a Pakistani court has freed a rape victim who was sentenced to death by stoning for the crime of having extramarital relations.

The woman, Zafran Bibi, left her jail cell on Thursday carrying the 7-month-old daughter who had been conceived when her husband was in prison and was therefore described by the judge as proof of her crime.

The case reached the court when Ms. Zafran, who is about 26, accused her brother-in-law, Jamal Khan, of raping her in the remote village in northwestern Pakistan were they lived.

No charges were brought against the brother-in-law because under the Islamic statutes in use here, called zina, rape can only be proved with the testimony of four male witnesses, a standard that is almost impossible to meet.

The fact that Ms. Zafran was convicted of adultery as a result of being raped was not unusual in Pakistan. Human rights groups say as many as half the women who report a rape are charged with breaking the laws of zina, which forbid any sexual contact outside marriage.

It was the sentence of death by stoning, which has never been carried out under the zina laws, that shocked people here.

The publicity led Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, to demand that the unusual sentence be overturned. "It has never happened and it will not happen," he said of the penalty of death by stoning.

An Islamic appeals court quickly complied, expediting the case and accepting questionable evidence to exonerate Ms. Zafran, said Rukhshanda Naz, who heads the local chapter of a women's rights organization called Aurat.

The court, in addition to the evidence it deemed damning of the illegitimate child, had taken Ms. Zafran's accusation as a confession that she had had forbidden sexual contact with a man other than her husband.

"The lady stated before this court that, yes, she had committed sexual intercourse, but with the brother of her husband," said the judge who convicted her, Anwar Ali Khan. "This left no option to the court but to impose the highest penalty."

At the appeal Ms. Zafran's husband, Naimat Khan, who has since been released from prison, claimed that the child was his, apparently to protect his family's honor. He said the child had been conceived during a conjugal visit, although such visits are not permitted.

Ms. Zafran obediently dropped her accusation of rape and supported her husband.

It was the second time she had allowed a family member to misrepresent her case. After she first accused her brother-in-law of rape a year ago, her father-in-law reported to the police that the baby was the child of another man with whom he had a personal feud. A local lawyer said the father-in-law received a payoff not to pursue the accusation of zina.

"The lesson from all this is that the woman is the weakest sector in the country," said Tariq Altaf, a human rights lawyer in Kohat, where Ms. Zafran was imprisoned for more than a year.

"She has been acquitted, but that is not real justice," he said. "Real justice would be punishment of her brother-in-law, who raped her."

Ms. Zafran's troubles are not over with her release from prison, Ms. Naz said.

She is now in danger of being killed either by family members who feel she has dishonored them or by other villagers who believe she would set a bad example of sexual license. At the urging of the villagers, Ms. Naz said, she will try to relocate Ms. Zafran, along with her husband, her two sons and her new daughter, Shabnam, in the nearby city of Peshawar.

"She's in physical danger," she said.

Ms. Naz said that she was now looking for a way to house and support the family but that such a move would be difficult. Both are illiterate rural people without skills apart from subsistence farming.

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